![]() Yes, a standard poodle who won the nonsporting group Monday at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, is a product of artificial insemination that used 25-year-old frozen sperm. The puppies startled their owners because they looked so different from the breed of today. She and her partner, the veterinarian Mary Stankovics, recently used 20-year-old semen that had been stored in the Netherlands to produce a litter of Irish wolfhounds. Inbreeding is common among pure-bred dogs, and using frozen semen can open the gene pool and reintroduce traits that have been lost or have become uncommon, Leach said. The technique is often used to breed dogs who live far away from each other, but it is also used by owners who want to inject variety into litters. In 2006, the most recent year for which data is available, frozen semen was used to conceive 760 litters of A.K.C.-approved puppies, said David Roberts, assistant vice president for registration services at the kennel club. Research into artificial insemination using frozen sperm continued throughout the 1970s, and in the early 1980s, the American Kennel Club formally endorsed the method.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |